The Tuscan's Revenge Wedding(8)

She lowered her gaze, her face changing, becoming closed in and so somber it almost seemed she picked up his thought. “Forget I asked. It’s really none of my business.”

It would very likely become her business, he reasoned while making circles with his thumbs, testing her resilient flesh under her jacket sleeve. It wasn’t as if the secret could be kept indefinitely. Amanda Davies could, in a few months, become a part of his family.

With abrupt decision, he said, “Your brother did more than drive my sister off a cliff.” He met her gray gaze, lifted a shoulder in a fatalistic gesture. “She is pregnant. Carita is lying back there in a coma while his child grows inside her.”

Amanda Davies drew a breath so swift and deep her breasts touched his chest. “You’re sure?”

Outrage raced along his veins at this slur upon his sister’s honor, also on his own as the head of her family. “You dare suggest Carita is promiscuous? She is not quite twenty and has been well protected until now. She’s barely had time or opportunity for one lover, much less enough to cause doubt as to the father of her child.”

Answering anger flashed in the eyes of the woman he held. “Then I pity her if she’s been as repressed as you make it sound. I meant nothing against her, nothing at all. I was only asking if her doctors are certain she’s pregnant.”

“Repressed? My only care has been to keep her safe from playboys like your brother.”

“Jonathan is no playboy! He’s only at loose ends.” Her anger faded as concern softened the gray of her eyes. “Oh, but — does he know?”

“I have no idea.” Her distress was so clear to him that he almost pulled her into his arms to offer comfort, in spite of everything. The brush of her thighs against his as he stood so close urged it even more. She would not appreciate it, he was sure, and the effort it took to resist stoked his temper even as it tested his willpower.

“Maybe that’s why he’s so frantic to see her,” she said with discovery in her voice. “He’s afraid they won’t care for her with that in mind. Or they will do something, give her something that may harm the baby.”

“He can stop worrying,” Nico answered with finality. “The child will be a De Frenza. No one will dare do anything that might bring harm without my express permission.”

She watched him while thoughts flickered in her eyes like lightning through a rain cloud. “It seems a miracle she didn’t miscarry. Are they quite sure she’s all right?”

“Perfectly, according to the gynecologist called when tests revealed the danger. She may yet lose the baby, but every hour that passes makes it less likely.”

“No wonder her doctors were in a stir. They must have been terrified to tell you.”

He gave her a scowl. “I am not such an ogre.”

“Just a man who expects everything to go according to his exact wish,” she said, an ironic twist of her lips that made him long to put them to better use. “But what if Carita needs all her strength to recover? What will happen if—”

“If she cannot live unless the baby is aborted?”

The woman he held flinched at his plain speaking, or perhaps the harshness in his voice. Still, she tipped her head in assent.

“I am head of my family and bound by honor and duty to do what is best for every member,” he answered in grim precision. “This decision, if it must come, will fall to me. I pray I am not forced to make it.”

“You are the head? Not your father?”

“He died of a heart attack a decade ago.”

“And your mother, Carita’s mother?”

“Gone as well. She left us a month after Carita and Carisa were born, but succumbed to breast cancer a few years later.”

Amanda gave a small, sympathetic shake of her head. Seconds later, her eyes widened as the implication in the similar names and timing of the births reached her. “Carita is a twin?”

“As you say, though not identical. Carisa is—” He stopped in an abrupt return to discretion. Amanda would discover the difference soon enough.

“That’s why you were so furious with Jonathan just now,” she said slowly, “because what he has done may require you to make a decision about which will live, your sister or her baby.”

She understood him a little too well for comfort, he thought. He met her eyes with hard intensity, and when he spoke his voice carried the iron of ancient tradition. “That is why I would like to kill him. That’s why I may well kill him if Carita does not live.”

“You can’t mean it.”

Down the hall, the young dark-haired nurse walked out of Davies’s room and turned to give them an indignant stare. Nicholas made no answer to Amanda Davies’s protest, but released her with an abrupt, open-handed gesture and stepped back. Inclining his head, he indicated that she should precede him along the corridor.

~ ~ ~

He didn’t, couldn’t intend what he’d said, Amanda told herself as she walked beside Nicholas. He was a sophisticated, modern businessman fully integrated into the electronic world. His threat against Jonathan was a figure of speech, not a vow based on some old-fashioned idea of vengeance for a wrong.

And yet something in his voice left her cold and aching inside. The look on his face made her wary of being anywhere near him.

The exit they took from the hospital was not the same one where they’d entered, but lay beyond a small, rather barren courtyard. It decanted onto a quiet side street that was almost deserted at this hour. At least, the only traffic seemed to be workmen or residents heading for their jobs. There was no sign of the paparazzi.

Nicholas had taken out his phone as they walked, punching in a number and issuing a brief order. They stood less than a minute before the limo rounded a corner and glided to a stop in front of them.

“If you don’t mind, you can drop me at a hotel,” she said as they pulled away from the curb. “Anything will do as long as it’s not too far away or too expensive.”

The Italian made no answer but sat staring out the side window. For all she could tell, he might not have heard her.

The driver did, and apparently understood English, for he glanced up into the rearview mirror. He looked back toward the street ahead of them, then into the mirror again as if awaiting an order. When it did not come, he cleared his throat. “Signor, signorina, a suggestion?”

Nicholas replied then in a brief spate of hard-edged Italian. Reaching for a small knob on the arm beside him, he held it while a screen of smoked glass closed off their back section from the driver. He returned his gaze to the street scenes beyond the windows.

She really did need to learn the language, Amanda told herself in irritation. As it was, she had no idea if Nicholas had reprimanded his driver for speaking out of turn or given directions to a hotel already selected for her.

She should question it, she knew, but could not find the energy. It seemed just as well to wait and see.

It wasn’t that she was intimidated by the man, certainly not. It was simply that he was a stranger and she was shut into a confined space with him at the moment. Given the state of his temper, it seemed best not to provoke another argument, even if she had the heart for it.

She glanced at him, wondering a little at his silence. His appeared remote, completely unfamiliar in the dim light that was now pink-tinged with the beginnings of sunrise. She was aware again, as she had been off and on in the past hours, of his diabolical attraction. The flutter it caused in the pit of her stomach was beyond exasperating, as was the near compulsion she felt to stare at him.

He sat in somber contemplation, as if turning over some knotty problem in his mind. And so he might be, considering the serious weight of his responsibilities. His hair looked as if he had run his fingers through it in either frustration or anger, and his eyes were shadowed from weariness. How long had it been since he had slept, she wondered. Forty-eight hours? Longer?

He must have sped to the hospital at once from wherever he had been when news of the car crash came to him. Surely he had waited there many hours, until he knew his sister’s condition was stable. He had flown to the States, then spent time searching for her before flying back again. He had not slept on the plane for even the short time she had. He must be exhausted, and yet he made nothing of it.

He was a formidable man but not indestructible, she thought with an odd constriction around her heart. No one was, least of all those who cared about others.

Nicholas was watching over his sister with endless concern and a brother’s protective love. What would he not show toward a lover? What would it be like to become the center of such fierce devotion, especially with passion added to the mix?

Bone-deep yearning spiraled through her, warming her blood so its heat pooled in her pelvis. He had supported her there in the hospital hallway. She could still feel the places on her arms where his thumbs had smoothed in absentminded yet sensual caress. His full attention would be an erotic onslaught of stunning proportions she was sure, a conflagration of feeling.

Not that she was likely to find out. No, nor wanted to if it came to that. It was perfectly possible to have a fleeting fantasy about a man without acting upon it. Just because she felt as hot and liquid inside as melted chocolate didn’t mean she was ready to fall into his arms.